Archive for October, 2013

Stockton Street seems to be the main drag for the markets and grocery stores now. At one time Grant Avenue was the main drag and grocery stores, fish and meat markets were interspersed with the curio shops that catered to the tourists.

Nowadays it seems like Grant Avenue is mainly for the tourist shops. Only at the last block are some markets and poultry stores. The markets are mainly on Stockton Street along a three block area.

They are going to tear up Stockton Street soon to build the Central Subway…which in my opinion, will decentralize Chinatown. First is how the businesses will survive the three to four years of construction. It will be very hard to get goods to the store during the construction. With the high rents they will have a very tough time.

Then there’s the aftermath. The land value will rise. Property taxes will rise. Along with rent. The small time private shops will not afford the rent. The residents cannot afford the high rents. What we will see will be corporate businesses moving in. There will be more gentrification happening. Chinatown will not be the Chinese community it once was. The only thing Chinese about Chinatown is the shell for the tourist on Grant Avenue.

The Ping Yuen was a housing project built by the government in San Francisco’s Chinatown. I did not live in the Ping Yuen, but it’s hard not to know anyone who lived there when growing up in Chinatown.

The people who grew up in the Ping Yuen threw their second annual picnic at Heather Farms in Concord, CA. It was well attended by about 150 people. This time they invited a lot of people whom were friends of the Ping Yuen. I knew a lot of people who grew up in the Ping Yuen. I used to think it was cool to live in the Ping Yuen until Albert Louie told me in the sixth grade how bad it really was. (I learned from Jimmy Louie that Albert died in a car accident at the picnic)

A boy was crushed to death in the elevator shaft when I was about twelve years old. Kenneth Wong was electrocuted to death when a radio fell into the bathtub when I was in the seventh grade. I got the meanest dirty look ever from Gilbert Wong when I was about ten years old. My newspaper route ended at the 655 Ping Yuen and I used to hang around there after the newspaper delivery. When I was about six years old, Lawrence Quan, the kid two doors from our store told us of a cool playground at the Ping Yuen. When we went there, there were a bunch of kids sitting on the apparatus in the playground. They looked at us and began pointing their middle fingers at us. Next thing I knew we were being chased out of the Ping Yuen. We ran for our lives! I am proud to say that I witnessed Hamster jumping off the second floor balcony onto the first floor when he was about nine years old. I found out Albert Louie died in an accident from his brother Jimmy. The stories go on and on.

It’s really great now that our generation of people who grew up in San Francisco’s Chinatown are getting together and sharing our comraderie.

I was at a Chinese restaurant in Palo Alto last Sunday when I came upon this sign for the restroom doors. I was not shocked or took it as offensive or anything…but I found it interesting and got me thinking. The intent was to show a Chinese woman and man. They used an image of a Qing dynasty empress or concubine and an official or emperor in traditional attire to depict a Chinese person. The Qing dynasty ruled China from 1644 to 1912. The rulers hail from the province of Manchuria.

This is something I’ve been pondering lately…what is Chinese culture? What is an image of a Chinese that can represent all Chinese? Because China has been through so many dynasties with each dynasty having it’s own unique characteristic, it is impossible to define Chinese culture in a nutshell. The image of a Qing dynasty figure does not represent what a Chinese is. This sign is outdated by 101 years.

The signs on each of the restroom doors of the Chinese restaurant in Palo Alto. I assume this sign is commercially available. It’s the first time I’ve seen it. I think it was meant to be cute.

One of the first, and most successful comic strips, created around 1902 was Richard Outcault’s Buster Brown, a mischievous preteen boy who with his pit bull terrier, Tige, got into all kinds of trouble. This is the same Buster Brown would soon become associated with a leading brand of children’s shoes that dominated the field for decades.

In the episode below, Buster decides to see how a trusting and unsuspecting Chinese laundryman would react if he brought in some laundry in which was wrapped some ink and mice! Buster Brown was not the only perpetrator of often mean tricks on Chinamen. To the contrary, the use of a Chinese laundryman as the victim was a popular theme in the humor of the period.

At the end of each episode, a summary panel would offer some “moral” or “lesson.” For this one, Buster concludes after hearing all the yelling and screaming…